The Anatomy of Fake News: A Critical News Literacy Education

by Nolan Higdon

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, concerns about fake news have fostered calls for government regulation and industry intervention to mitigate the influence of false content. These proposals are hindered by a lack of consensus concerning the definition of fake news or its origins. Media scholar Nolan Higdon contends that expanded access to critical media literacy education, grounded in a comprehensive history of fake news, is a more promising solution to these issues. The Anatomy of Fake News offers the first historical examination of fake news that takes as its goal the effective teaching of critical news literacy in the United States. Higdon employs a critical-historical media ecosystems approach to identify the producers, themes, purposes, and influences of fake news. The findings are then incorporated into an invaluable fake news detection kit. This much-needed resource provides a rich history and a promising set of pedagogical strategies for mitigating the pernicious influence of fake news.

249 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 4, 2020

Reviews

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una mirada bastante completa de la historia y el impacto de las fake news.
En el capítulo final hay diez consideraciones para que el lector pueda usar como guía para saber si el contenido que se consume es falso o no, que me pareció genial.

[Teo · Rating 4 out of 5]

2026.01.12–2026.01.19

Contents

Higdon N (2020) (06:20) Anatomy of Fake News - A Critical News Literacy Education

Acknowledgments

Introduction
• The Need for Media Literacy
• What Is Fake News?
• Methodology: A Critical Media Ecology Approach
• Layout of This Book

1. The Fourth Estate: Democracy and the Press
• Democracy and the Press
• What Is News? Five Functions of the Press
• What Is Newsworthy? Reporters, Journalists, and the Spin Room
• The New News: Digital Outlets
• Technological, Economic, and Political Threats to Journalism

2. The Faux Estate: A Brief History of Fake News in America
• Colonial-Era Fake News: Moral Panic
• The Moral Panic of Colonial-Era Fake News
• Fake News in the Early Republic: Partisan Narratives
• The Nineteenth Century: Fake News and the Penny Press
• War, War, and Rumors of War
• Celebrities, Self-Interest, and Scapegoating
• The Twentieth Century: Radio
• The Revolutionary Medium of Television
• Diminishment of the Press

3. Satirical News and Political Party Propaganda Apparatuses
• Infotainment
• Privileging Entertainment over Facts
• Political Propaganda Apparatuses
• The Fake News Press
• Political Propagandists Become the News Media

4. The Roots of State-Sponsored Propaganda
• Nascent Propaganda Machines
• Industrial Propaganda Machines
• Fake News in Enemy Territory
• The Second US Propaganda Machine
• Cold War Propaganda in the USSR
• US Cold War Propaganda
• The War on Terror

5. Fake News and the Internet Economy
• The Technomics of Data Collection
• The Surveillance Capitalist Economy
• Predictive Analytic Products
• Social Media, Repetition, Reinforcement, and the Privileging of Fake News
• Internet Fake News Outlets and the Privileging of Fake News
• The Political Economy of Digital Fake News
• The Hyperpartisan Fake News Profiteers
• The Alt-Right: An Internet Phenomenon
• From Fake News to Real Violence
• Digital State-Sponsored Propaganda Machines
• The Purpose of Digital Fake News
• Counterdisinformation in the United States
• Digital Propaganda Apparatuses of Political Parties

6. Fighting Fake News: Solutions and Discontent
• Governmental Responses
• • Censorship
• • Regulation
• Technology Industry Responses
• • Techno-Utopianism
• • Techno-Utopian Policies for Combating Fake News
• • Acritical Media Literacy: A Techno-Utopian Approach to Fake News
• Developing Critical News Literacy Education

7. The Fake News Detection Kit: The Ten-Point Process to Save Our Democracy
• 1. Do I Want to Be Informed or a Fake News Disseminator?
• 2. Should I React or Investigate?
• 3. Why Was My Attention Drawn to This Content?
• 4. Who Is the Publisher of This Content?
• 5. Who Is The Author of This Content?
• 6. Do I Understand the Content?
• 7. Does the Evidence Hold Up under Scrutiny?
• 8. What Is Missing from This Content?
• 9. Who Might Benefit from or Be Harmed by This Message?
• 10. Does the Content Qualify as Journalism?

Notes
Bibliography
Index

[Mahita Shankar · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have ever questioned or argued about where we get our News, I encourage you to read The Anatomy of Fake News by Nolan Higdon. The book is separated into seven sections, with the time frames from 2016 to 2017. While there is a debate about what news gets perceived as real news and not fake news in our present society, the primary author, Nolan Higdon, does an excellent job portraying how the news affects the media and the audience who reads fake news.
The book starts with the 2016 election, where President-elect Donald Trump yells at the CNN news organization as terrible and shouts at the CNN reporter that they are mainly fake news. Since then, the word fake news has been prominent in American conversations. Since then, citizens have mistrusted the press concerning fake news. Most Americans are unable to figure out journalism from fake news. Digital outlets have transformed America into the most media-saturated society in history. “About 75 percent of Americans take in some kind of news at least once daily” (Higdon 23).
Fake News causes the moral panic of the colonial era as “dehumanization, fake news content that is designed to spread fear can cause a moral panic.”(Higdon 30) In addition, it shows that fake news inspires moral fright in African Americans. The Fake News Press has made political propaganda apparatuses that convinced the public to create fake news stories, such as a girl who falsely claimed that she witnessed the Iraqi Army launching babies out of incubators.

“Digital propaganda machines employ digital fake news for a variety of functions.”(Higdon 115) Digital fake news has caused internet trolls to start quarrels and offend people. It has been accused that spreading fake news has influenced the Crimean people. Regarding fighting fake news, “Traditionally, government regulation, like censorship, has failed to combat fake news because it operates from the false assumption that news consumers can differentiate between fake news and journalism.” (Higdon 130) This explains how news consumers face fake news in news sources and journalists they find online, and it gives an example of providing diverse views in news media. The Communication Act empowered the federal government to limit the number of media outlets owned by a company in a particular market. Despite this regulation, fake news content creators started many companies and created media outlets to spread fake content. Similarly, he showed examples of how other regulations failed to prevent fake news from spreading.

This book is an excellent read because there are so many perspectives in this story to be examined by the reader. I recommend this book since it educates readers about the fake news regarding news sources. This book is an excellent find to understand the sources of fake news and figure out how to separate them from our daily news.

[kenzie lai · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was really well written, and Higdon made a lot of valid points in how fake Nws has been weaponised over time, from the publication of the first newspaper to the digital age. His discussions were really insightful in regards to how fake news is embedded in our daily lives and how much misinformation affects us, such as through politics or our education.